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Gratitude Friday...silence

This week's entry wrote itself...and a day early at that!

It all began with my friend Valerie's weekly email to her church family. (For those who don't already know this, Valerie is the minister at my church, which is how we came to know each other and then grew into being best friends.)

Anyway, her email went like this (with the reminders of upcoming events edited out):

"Good morning

Welcome to those new families joining us this week in Thursday Thoughts! My list keeps growing which is absolutely wonderful! Last night, a friend of mine brought a book by Kahlil Gibran and dropped it off at the office. It was one that I saw at her house and really wanted to read. Gibran might be familiar to many or most of you and, while I knew of him for a long time, I had not really read anything until this past year or so. He has become one of my favourites. Most mornings I begin with a time of reflection and reading and so today I opened up Gibran and began to flip through my eyes fell on the chapter entitled From Beautiful and Rare Sayings – 1923, this is what I read:

“My soul counselled me and charged me to listen for voices that rise neither from the tongue nor the throat. Before that day I heard but dully, and naught save clamour and loud cries came to my ears;

But now I have learned to listen to silence, to hear its choirs singing the songs of the ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity”

As I read I was drawn to the line from the psalms that says “Be still and know…” How often we get caught up in the clamour of day to day life and so surrounded by noise that we miss the beauty, wonder and peace that lies just beneath the surface in those moments of deep silence. My prayer for each of you this day is that somewhere in the midst of chaos you will take a moment to breathe deeply and listen to the silence and experience the possibilities that lie there."

Blessings
Valerie

I started to write this reply back to her:

"Wonderful thoughts this week. Love the Gibran quotation, and love your reflections on it. I think I read that same verse when I was in your office the other night. (Glad you like the book...I want it back at some point though...just saying!)

I imagine one of the reasons I love sunsets so much is that they often invoke that "be still" feeling in me...something about gazing into the colours and light and endless depth of the sky carries me to a place of feeling surrounded and filled with something immense and wondrous, that stretches me beyond imagining, calms my soul, makes me feel...I don't know, is hard to describe...whole maybe. I don't know why, but I don't question it! I remember something else Gibran wrote: "In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song..." Maybe what I feel through the sunset is the song of God...

I am grateful for those moments, and for the reminder to embrace them - thanks, my friend :)"

But when I realized I had just written "I am grateful for...", I stopped typing and decided to make this my Friday gratitude entry instead of simply replying to her individually.

So...I am grateful for the moments in which I "breathe deeply and listen to the silence and experience the possibilities that lie there". I hope you all find a moment like that today, in the midst of your own life's chaos.

Here are a few images of my sky, which is to say, the piece of the sky that spreads its glory over my home...

As always, each Friday I invite you to click over to Diana Strinati Baur's blog and check out the other Gratitude Friday Club blogs...

girasoli, I really love it where I live. I'm so lucky to have these glorious views. Even when it's overcast, I can see such a sweep of sky that it's fascinating to watch the play of shadows in the clouds.